Arpetrio: This Side Up Review

Published: March 7, 2013

By: Chris Schwartzkopf

<a data-cke-saved-href="http://arpetrio.bandcamp.com/album/this-side-up" href="http://arpetrio.bandcamp.com/album/this-side-up">This Side Up by Arpetrio</a>Arpetrio belongs somewhere along the length of a spectrum of electronic music that includes artists like Tycho, Paper Diamond, STS9, and Heiss.

I don’t mean to suggest a similarity from a technical standpoint. It’s an unfair generalization to assume that all of these producers arrive at their finished product strictly by the same route. What I mean to say is that they are connected by a certain depth and distance of the sounds they create, a certain epic quality to the music. It’s music that looks toward the horizon.

While not as mellow as Tycho, Arpetrio is still not quite as aggressive as, say, Paper Diamond. Nevertheless, the music holds an undeniable, not to mention irresistible, tension.

Another notable aspect is that even though Alex Mindermann, Wes Taylor, and Trent Little only started creating and releasing music three years ago, the trio has already made its mark upon the movement back toward the incorporation of more organic, live elements into electronic music. Thus, they stand alongside multi-instrumentalist and organic music adherent Douglas Appling, better known as Emancipator, during a very exciting shift in attitudes.

Arpetrio’s grooves swell, rolling over and over like a gathering storm. They seem poised on the verge of something big, or, rather, to be in anticipation of something big, to be beholden to it.

This is the tension I mentioned above. It began on Encrypted Layers and reaches new heights on the trio’s fifth and latest, This Side Up. It’s tension that has no release. Each track builds and builds and then, just when you think the resolution is just around the corner, simply ends. There is no winding down.

It’s definitely a bold move and it leads one to wonder already about future projects from Arpetrio. If This Side Up can hold that tension in abeyance for as long as it does, what can we expect from the next album?